REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
TO THE FOUNDRY UNITED METHODIST CHURCH CONGREGATION
Foundry United Methodist Church
Washington, D.C.

11:40 A.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Reverend Wogaman, staff, choir, congregation of
this wonderful church. I would like to thank many people in this
audience, but if I might, a few by name.

My good friend, Bishop May and Mrs. May, thank you for being here.
My Councilman, Mr. Evans and Mrs. Evans, thank you so much for your
friendship and for being here. (Laughter.) Senator Max Cleland, my
friend of many years, before either one of us were in our present
positions -- surprising all but our mothers by our success. (Laughter.)
I am so proud of you, sir, and I thank you for all you have done.

I think of this church when reading the words of Paul that Hillary
cited earlier, speaking of his gratitude to the Thessalonians, or
constantly remembering their work of faith, their labor of love, their
steadfastness of hope. I thank Foundry for all that and for being a
church home to my family these last eight years.

I thank especially those of you who were so kind to Chelsea over
the years, who provided her opportunities to participate in the life of
the church, especially in the Appalachia Service Project, from which she
learned so much. I thank those of you who have taken special care to
befriend Hillary and to support her. And I thank you especially for the
wonderful welcome you gave her last week, when she came back here for
the first time as a senator-to-be.

I thank you all for your prayers and your welcome to all of us in
the storm and sunshine of these last eight years. I will always have
wonderful memories of every occasion where we passed the peace; for all
the people, young and old, who came up to me and said a kind word of
welcome; to remind me that no matter what was going on in Washington,
D.C., at the moment, there was a real world out there, with real people
and real hearts and minds, reaffirming the timeless wisdom of de
Tocqueville's observation so long ago, that America is great because
America is good. You cannot imagine the peace, the comfort, the
strength I have drawn from my Sundays here.

I want to thank you for a few other things. For the social mission
of this church, especially for your outreach to the homeless, which I
have been honored to support. And for your constant support of my
efforts to bring peace in the Middle East and Kosovo and Northern
Ireland and the other trouble spots of the world, where there are people
suffering who have no money or power, too often overlooked by great
nations with great interests.

I want to thank you for making Foundry a true community church,
welcoming Christians from all races and all nations, with all kinds of
abilities and disabilities, some seen and some not. I thank you
especially for the kindness and courage of Foundry's welcome to gay and
lesbian Christians, people who should not feel outside the family of
God.

I thank you for your support for the city of Washington, for its
economic and social revitalization, which I have done my best to speed.
And for giving its citizens the political equality and statehood I have
always believed they deserve, as my license plate shows. (Laughter.)
And will for at least a couple more weeks. (Laughter.)

Especially, I would like to thank Reverend Wogaman, for being my
pastor and friend, my counselor and teacher. Most of you know that for
more than two years now, he and two other minister friends of mine have
shared the burden of meeting with me on a weekly basis. It has been an
immense blessing to me and to my service as President.

Two weeks from yesterday, at high noon, I will relinquish my office
-- doing so with a heart filled with gratitude; gratitude to the
American people for the chance to serve and to leave our country with
more opportunity, stronger bonds of community and a more positive impact
in the larger world, at the dawn of a new century and a whole new aspect
of human affairs.

Our nation has come a long way together these last eight years, and
I am profoundly grateful to have had the opportunity to play a part in
it. In the years ahead, America may have Presidents who do this job
better than I have. But I really doubt we'll ever have another one who
enjoyed it more than I have. (Laughter.)

Well, those are my reflections. I didn't know what the title of my
sermon was until I picked up the program, as I walked into church.
(Laughter.)

What do I anticipate? I anticipate that my Christian bearing will
be tested by a return to commercial air travel -- (laughter and
applause) -- where I will reap the rewards of not having succeeded in
one of the things I tried very hard to do, which was to end all those
backlogs.

I anticipate that for some several months I will be disoriented
when I walk into large rooms, because no one will be playing a song
anymore. (Laughter.) I look forward to finding out whether John Quincy
Adams was right when he said, there is nothing so pathetic in life as an
ex-President. (Laughter.) Or whether, instead of his words, the life
of John Quincy Adams and the life of Jimmy Carter prove exactly the
reverse.

In the next chapter of my life I will do my best to use the
incredible opportunities my country has given me to be a good citizen
here at home and around the world, to advance the causes I believe in
and to lift the fortunes and hopes of those who deserve a better hand
than they have been dealt -- whether in Africa, Asia, Latin America or
Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, the inner cities or the Native
American reservations. I will try every day to remember, as apparently
for the first time in my life I will be able to earn a sizeable income
-- (laughter) -- that Christ admonished us that our lives will be judged
by how we do unto the least of our neighbors.

I will also do my best to keep working for peace and reconciliation
among people, across their differences, to find ways to get people to
move beyond tolerance to celebration of those differences. I know it's
sort of out of fashion, but I've kind of grown impatient with the word
"tolerance," because tolerance implies that someone who's better than
someone else is decent enough to put up with them. And I think we need
to move beyond that.

We are moving into the most incredible era of human affairs the
world has ever known, in terms of our interdependence, our capacity to
relate to people across national and cultural and religious lines, and
our ability to use these breathtaking advances in technology with
advances in bio-medical sciences to lengthen and improve lives in ways
that previously are literally unimaginable.

And, yet, the biggest threat we face is the oldest problem of
humankind, the fear of the other, which can so easily lead to hatred and
de-humanization and violence, but even if it doesn't go that far, limits
the lives all of us might otherwise live.

And I have spent a lot of time, as you might have noticed, in a
reasonably combative arena. I am not without my competitive instincts.
A lot of days I thought just showing up was an act of competition.
(Laughter.) But I do believe, in the end, when all is said and done,
what matters most is what we did that was common to our humanity. And,
somehow, I will do everything I can to advance that simple but powerful
idea at home and around the world.

I will also do my best to support my Senator and our daughter. And
I will try to keep learning and growing, working to follow the example
of the mythic Parsifal, a good man slowly wise.

Thanks to the good people of New York, as Phil said, this is not
really a goodbye, but the beginning of a new chapter in our lives with
Foundry. But it is a new chapter. So let me thank you again, for
letting all of us, Hillary, Chelsea and me, make this part of our life's
journey with you; for your constant reminder, in ways large and small,
that though we have all fallen short of the glory, we are all redeemed
by faith in a loving God.